“Oh, Barnabetta! What did you do with it?” cried Ruth, forgetting everything else but the sudden hope that the album might be recovered.
“I put it in the bottom of that closet downstairs in the dinin’ room,” confessed Barnabetta, bursting into tears. “And your auntie locked the door and I couldn’t get at it again. And now she can’t unlock it.
“I—I was hopin’ I could get the book and give it back to you—leave it somewhere where you’d be sure to see it. I was ashamed of what I’d done. I wouldn’t touch a dollar of that money in it—not now, after you’d been so awful nice to me and Pop. And—and—”
But here Ruth put both arms around her and stopped her lips with a kiss.
“Oh, Barnabetta! Don’t say another word!” she cried. “You have made me the happiest girl in all the world to-day!”
Barnabetta stared at her, open-mouthed and wide-eyed.
“What’s that you’re sayin’, Miss Ruth?” asked the clown.
“Why, don’t you see?” cried Ruth, laughing and sobbing together. “I thought the book was really lost—that we’d never recover it. And I’ve just discovered that all that money and those bonds in it belong to our dear friend, Mrs. Eland, and her sister, who is in the hospital. Oh! and they need the money so badly!
“Just think! it is a fortune. There’s fifty thousand dollars in money besides the bonds. And I took one of the notes to the bank and found out for sure that the money is good.
“Oh, dear me!” cried Ruth, in conclusion, sobbing and laughing together until she hiccoughed. “Oh, dear me! I never was so delighted by anything in my life—not even when we came here to live at the old Corner House!”